Latest Health News

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Stroke patients have a higher risk of death if they're admitted to a rural hospital on the weekend, a new study finds. University of Georgia researchers analyzed 2016 data on stroke deaths at U.S. hospitals to learn whether the so-called "weekend effect" influenced stroke outcomes. "The weekend effect is the phenomenon where the risk of bad or adverse outcomes, such as mortality in our study, increases for those who are admitted to the hospital over the weekend as opposed to a weekday," said lead author Birook Mekonnen, who was a graduate student in the College of Public Health when the research was conducted. There was evidence to support the weekend effect in all hospitals. But outcomes were especially poor for rural patients who had...

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists knew that dangerous T-cells lived in the pancreases of people with type 1 diabetes, but a new study shows they also take up residence in the pancreases of healthy individuals. Researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California used a new staining technique to show where these cells had gathered in human tissue samples. They were surprised that even tissue from healthy people showed these cells in high numbers in the pancreas. What's the difference? Even though healthy people have these immune system cells, people with type 1 diabetes have T-cells that are close to or infiltrate cell clusters inside the pancreas. Beta cells that live in these clusters make insulin to regulate blood sugar, but in people with type...

By Michael Precker American Heart Association News WEDNESDAY, Oct. 21, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Centuries before bacon cheeseburgers, cigarettes and couch potatoes, people had clogged arteries that can lead to heart attack and stroke. How do we know this? Mummies told us. No, not the groaning, wrapped-in-gauze, walking-with-arms-straight-out mummies that come to life in scary movies we'll be watching this Halloween season. For more than a decade, experts have been using modern medical technology to examine mummified remains of people who lived and died thousands of years ago. They've found atherosclerosis, a cardiovascular disease linked to unhealthy modern lifestyles. "We were surprised," said Dr. Randall Thompson, a cardiologist with St. Luke's Health System in...

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- One of the reasons women may be less vulnerable to COVID-19 is because they're more likely to adhere to social distancing policies, a new survey suggests. A survey conducted in eight countries in March and April found substantial gender differences both in numbers of people who considered COVID-19 to be a serious health crisis and who agreed with public policies to help fight the pandemic. In March, for example, 59% of women considered the coronavirus to be a serious health problem, whereas only about 49% of men felt the same. Women were also ahead of men in terms of agreeing with public policies and following them. Though the numbers of people complying with the rules dropped over time, particularly in Germany, the gender gap persisted,...